One snowy evening this past Spring, my kids and I were celebrating our filly Sassy’s one-year birthday, making her a horse cake and ruminating on how difficult the last year had been for us all, Sassy included.
We had spent the last 365 days hand-raising an orphan foal. At 9 days old, Sassy’s mama died in a tragic accident and we rolled up our sleeves and dove into an unknown pile of manure with both muck boots. We drove round the clock, back and forth from the barn, 24 hours a day.
It was bottle after bottle, then bucket after bucket of milk replacer, tear after tear, prayer after prayer, dollar after dollar, mile after mile, so many sleepless nights, so much uncertainty and so much determination to save her and save her we did.
As we were talking about the struggles and successes of the last year, our lives changed again in an instant with a phone call from a veterinarian friend who knew what we had accomplished with her.
On the very anniversary of making it through the toughest year of our lives and literally uttering the words how glad we were that we didn’t have to do that anymore out of my mouth, the phone rang.
There was a tiny palomino colt found on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, on Easter Sunday, the very day he was born, emaciated, alone and badly injured in the desert. The Navajo Ranger who found him had not much more than duct tape, torn tee shirt strips and a maxi pad to pack the chest wound. She tried for a week to save him and the little colt was in big trouble.
There was no room for hesitation; we knew immediately what we needed to do and got out of our pajamas and drove through a snowstorm in the middle of the night to retrieve this little foal. We were not prepared for how tiny and how sick he was.
Driving home, we were not even sure he was alive as he lay in the back of the car, barely breathing on my children’s laps. No one could have prepared us for the impact he would have on our lives.
When we got him home, we went to work immediately and called in every favor, every expert and every prayer we could muster. People around the world began to follow this little horse. People in Spain were lighting prayer candles. In Florida, t-shirts were being created in his name to raise money for his care.
My vet, Dr. Kirby Brown, came at all hours of the day and night, sometimes multiple times a day, from far away. Denkai Animal Sanctuary swung into full gear and came with donations, medication and meals and so much love.
Complete strangers banded together from all over the world to try to save this tiny baby horse. My dearest friend Scott Perez came around the clock to help in every which way. Alternative healers came with Dr. Brown and worked side by side. The world was fighting for this little foal to make it.
My son named him Smooch, because even as sick as he was, the little foal couldn’t stop giving kisses. He seemed to turn the corner and stood up, began to take a bottle and then a bucket, he whinnied when we came in the room. Recesses in my heart felt full for the first time.
I began to imagine what our lives would be like with him as he grew up. We slept with him on the floor in a mess of shavings and prayers. We didn’t know how he was going to live and we couldn’t imagine living without him at the same time. We covered him in heated blankets and showered him in love.
We treated Smooches’ chest wound that was far too deep to heal. We learned he was born with a condition called Patent Ucrachus, which required surgery. Someone offered to send a plane to CSU but he was too sick to travel and added to the complications. Then he got pneumonia and subsequent scours from the medication to treat the infection.
Smooch died in my lap, in the middle of the night after living 9 days with us and changed my life forever. I have never fought so hard for anything in my life as I did for Smooch or wanted something, I didn’t even know I needed, so badly as I did to have a life with him.
As coincidental as the timing of the phone call, I can’t explain it other than we needed each other. Orphan foals are disastrously difficult and wild orphan foals add an even thinner layer to the shell that cradles these babies.
Horses like Smooch are fragile and when they break, the pieces are so easy to cut yourself on. Like most wild orphan foals, when they break, the pieces are usually jagged, not clean like a puzzle that can be easily put back together. As he took his last breath in my lap, I lay on the floor, cutting my hands and my heart on all of the tiny shards, trying to put Smooch back together, but the pieces were too great.
When he was gone, I realized that maybe all of those tiny pieces on the floor weren’t supposed to go back into his heart, but maybe they were supposed to fill the places in mine. Maybe that’s what these horses do that we love so deeply, they fill little places in our souls that were missing. Horses make us whole.
The problem with wild horses is bigger than one tiny orphaned foal. Their blood runs deep in the desert sand and clings to the surface of the U.S. Government and Tribal Nations Hands. For such a tough breed, they are strikingly fragile.
Wild horses are a controversial topic and for some, it’s easier to look right through them, seeing the landscape alone and to not recognizing their significance until they are gone from the very picture they helped to paint.
Jenny Johnston is a fourth-generation Durango local, part-time rodeo announcer and full-time wrangler to two lil’ buckaroos.
